Asset management is becoming a major concern for companies, hospitals, schools, libraries and the like. In other words, as these institutions become larger, it is becoming increasing difficult to manage the location of assets or resources, for example, high-value, mobile assets or resources of which there is a limited quantity available, such as defibrillators. Thus, when one of the many patients in the hospital needs a defibrillator, it is important that the hospital personnel be able to locate a defibrillator for the patient and ascertain its status, for example, in use, available, broken and the like, in a timely manner. Asset management issues may also arise in institutions other than hospitals. For example, a large company may employ far more people than it has portable computers. Thus, when one of the employees needs a portable computer for a business trip, it is important that the employee be able to locate a portable computer and ascertain its status. However, as these institutions become larger, it may become increasingly difficult to monitor the location and status of these high-value, mobile resources. Inefficient asset management can lead to over allocation of funds to purchase more of the limited resources than necessary.
Currently, asset management may include manual asset searches, i.e., send a person to locate the asset, the use of bar codes affixed to the asset or the use of legacy radio frequency tags. However, each of these methods has drawbacks. For example, sending a person to locate an available device may be overly time consuming as well as unsuccessful. Affixing a barcode to the device may not provide any status information, may also be time consuming, unsuccessful and expensive. Legacy radio frequency tags may not provide any device status information, may not be designed for a particular institutions environment, may be expensive and disruptive to install.
A company by the name of Radianse, Inc., of Lawrence, Mass. has attempted to provide a more practical solution to asset management in a hospital environment. Radianse provides indoor positioning solutions (IPS) for healthcare institutions. In particular, Radianse IPSs use long-range active radio frequency identification (RFID) location technology for location and association of people, places and things. Information is shared using web and interface standards such as extensible markup language (XML) and short message service (SMS), and Radianse receivers directly connect to a hospital's existing local area network (LAN).
In particular, to track assets with a Radianse IPS, small, battery-powered transmitters (tags) are attached to mobile medical devices. The tags continuously transmit active RFID information and infrared signals to Radianse receivers plugged into a hospital's existing LAN. The Radianse receivers are standalone devices that are installed in various places in the hospital environment. The RFID information may be received by multiple receivers within a certain perimeter of the tag, but the infrared signal may only be received by the receivers in the same room as the tag due to the nature of infrared. Web-based location software analyzes and displays on a computer screen the exact location based on the RFID information and the infrared signal in real time. Data may also be stored for transfer to any standards-based clinical or hospital information system.
Since the Radianse tag continuously transmits to a reader, the battery life of the tag may only be from about a year to about 16 months, thus, tag replacement may be time consuming and costly. Furthermore, the use of infrared signals to pinpoint the exact location of the mobile medical device may be unreliable as anything placed between the tag and the receiver may block the receiver from receiving the infrared signal. Finally, the Radianse receivers are standalone devices that require installation and integration with the hospital system, which may be burdensome and costly. Accordingly, improved methods of asset management may be desired.